He Lived and Died a Hero
by TYRider
Summary: Sherlock reflects on life without John Watson. Sequel to "Of Home and Heroes" but can be read as a stand alone. Post fall. Major character death. Angst.


**A/N: This is a sequel to "Of Home and Heroes" but can be read as a stand alone. Please read and review. Enjoy.  
Disclaimer: Only the plot belongs to me. The rest belongs to ACD, Moffat and Gatiss and BBC.**

Slowly, Sherlock lowered his leggy body to the ground, curling his long limbs under himself carefully. It's July and the ground was still cold—_it would always be cold._ He reminded himself. This was his life Without. It was like Before, but not. Now he knew what he was missing. Now there was a gaping hole in his universe.

Now he was _without._ Without companionship. Without stolen coasters and inappropriate giggling at crime scenes. Without reprimands and reminders, without "a bit not good." and "You should eat." Without someone to talk to that wasn't a skull. Without the occasional brawl. Without sentiment and caring, without his colleague and not-his-date. Without his blogger. Without his friend. _Without John Watson._

And that gaping hole in his universe? It was threatening to swallow him alive.

_Enough._ Sherlock shook himself mentally. _Enoughenoughenough. _He repeated, shutting up the sadness with his fury. "Caring is not an advantage." He quoted to himself, but somewhere deep down he doubted.

He looked up at the marble slab before him and caressed the polished stone, touching the new grooves in its surface. No one had argued when Sherlock told them what the epitaph was lacking, they simply hung their heads and nodded like they had always known, but couldn't come up with the words. There's no arguing with something so true. To Sherlock's—not pleasure, never pleasure, never again—some sort of appeased and satisfied emotion without a name (funny how everything seemed to be without these days) his orders were swiftly followed and the inscription altered.

Sherlock didn't even have to look up to know what the stone said now, he'd immediately committed it to memory.

_Here Lies_

_John Hamish Watson_

_Brave Soldier_

_Caring Doctor_

_Loyal Friend_

_He Lived and Died a Hero_

Sherlock had decided on the fitting phrase even before he knew how John had met his death. When he found out the words became even more true—if that was possible. He leaned back, running a thin hand through his unruly curls as he recalled that day.

"_He lived and died a hero." Sherlock had said aloud, quietly slipping into DI Lestrade's office. Lestrade would be the second to see Sherlock since his 'resurection'— or third if you counted John, which Sherlock did._

"_What?" Lestrade had asked, wide-eyed. He recovered in a moment. "So, Mrs. Hudson wasn't hallucinating." He said flatly._

_Sherlock gave a slight shake of his head._

"_That's what's missing. They need to add that." Sherlock said in answer to the DI's forgotten question._

"_What?" he asked again._

"_On John's… er, on John's…" His voice kept fading out, refusing to cooperate. "John's tombstone." He finally ground out at a tone barely above a whisper._

"_Oh." Lestrade replied, turning the phrase over in his head. "Fitting, that."_

"_Yes."_

"_I suppose you know, then." Lestrade said._

"_No, I don't. You're only the third person I've visited and neither of the other two could be bothered to tell me." Which was true enough. He'd only seen Mrs. Hudson for a moment and she'd been to shocked to do anything but sob into her sleeve and say, "Ohdearohdearohdear." And John, well, John couldn't say anything._

"_Oh."_

_Sherlock bit back the urge to ask Lestrade why he was suddenly so in love with that damned word._

"_Well, then, I guess you don't know just how right you are." he began and leaned back into his seat behind his desk and motioned for Sherlock to take the seat across from him. He cleared his throat and even Sherlock could sense the emotion rushing through him. "John was a mess after you, er, fell."_

_Sherlock cringed with guilt._

"_The limp came back and the tremor and the therapist temporarily. He stopped leaving the flat and refused visitors and phone calls, a regular hermit. That didn't keep me from going by, dropping off takeout at the door. I just hoped he'd let me in. One day I was in here and there was this knock at the door and in pops John, looking like he'd been hit by a train, but better than I'd hoped for. I asked him how I could help him and he asked me for a case. Said he was bored, needed a distraction. I took pity on him and handed him one. It was a puzzler, but not too important and not dangerous at all—missing dolls."_

_Sherlock pulled a face and Lestrade paused his narrative to explain. "Designer dolls—diidn't even know there was such a thing—apparently worth a grand or so each were being stolen all around town. No forced entries, no other items—even ones of higher value—taken, no leads."_

_Sherlock nodded for him to continue with the original story._

"_John took the file, said thanks and walked out as quickly as he'd come. Didn't see or hear from him for a while, but he spent less time at Baker Street and more time out and about. I thought it was progress."_

_Sherlock detected a note of regret and would have demanded an explanation if Lestrade had given him a chance._

"_Couple weeks later I get a call from John, he's solved the case, has all the evidence and everything and it's a real tale. We get together and he hands over what he's found. Turns out it the dolls were stuffed with heroine. It was a drug delivery gone wrong. All the dolls arrived from South America in one shipment along with another shipment of identical, but perfectly innocuous dolls. Somehow the two crates got swapped and the heroine dolls were sold before the dealer could extract his merchandise from them. We rounded up the dealer and his little gang and were able to put them away thanks to John." Lestrade paused again, looking tired._

"_I see." Sherlock said softly, and he did, but he didn't observe—he didn't see what this had to do with John's death._

_The silence stretched on then finally, "He seemed better after that. Quiet and closed off still, but he was eating and leaving the flat and doing things that I found out about later."_

"_Just tell me how it happened." Sherlock requests, void of emotion, like a man asking about his own execution and resigned to his fate._

"_Yeah, alright." Lestrade says, but it's not. "Well John was John and after you'd… left he seemed to lose what little self-preservation he'd had before. I found out later that he'd been doing little, er, interventions and rescues all over London since that case I gave him. Saving junkies mostly." He gave Sherlock a significant glance. "But that wasn't all. I've got reports of a man matching his description pulling people from burning buildings, knocking out would-be muggers, rescuing a cat from up a bloody tree." He laughs a little._

_Sherlock closed his eyes and nodded, John the Hero. Saving patients or soldiers or Sherlock, John Watson had always been waging a one-man war against death. Whether he was fighting that war in the bloody desert of Afghanistan or on the streets of London it didn't matter._

"_Go on." He instructs._

"_Well, John was walking across Westminster Bridge around noon _that _day. Out of nowhere witnesses say a man pulled a gun on the bridge. It was a bloody hit. Apparently John realized who his target was. Knowing John there's no telling what went through his mind, but he acted quicly." Lestrade is forced to stop due to the sob rising in his throat. Finally, "According to reports John pushed the target out of the way and jumped took the bullet without hesitation."_

_Sherlock opens his mouth to ask, but Lestrade waves his hand dismissively before continuing. "From eyewitnesses we know it was a gut wound."_

"_You said from eyewitnesses… Why don't you know?"_

"_His body fell into the Thames, Sherlock. His body wasn't recovered."_

_Sherlock holds back the wave of nausea and emotion. John didn't deserve this, to die without a friend, his body abandoned to the river to rot. It was more than Sherlock could stomach. He swiftly deleted any thoughts of what John's final moments were like—unconscious hopefully._

"_So here's not really there is he?" Sherlock asks after a while._

_Lestrade almost asks what he's talking about, but he figures it out. "No, he's not. It's just a marker."_

_Lestrade nods and Sherlock leaves quietly._

_Sherlock texts Mycroft on his way out telling him the error of omitting the truer-than-true words on the good doctor's memorial. Mycrofts simply replies saying he'll see it corrected._

_And it was._

Sherlock straightens up and turns, sitting cross-legged to face the stone. He draws in a shaky breath and begins. "The memorial is better now the epitaph's complete. You know it's true don't you? All of it's so true." And he talks to the stone even though he knows John's not there and that the stone doesn't have ears and even though he's pretty sure he doesn't believe in an afterlife. He talks to the stone because he must, because he'd left so many things unsaid and if he doesn't say them now, even if it's only to thin air, then he'll burst. "You made me a better person. You saved me just like you saved so many others and the world is different because of you John Watson. It's better. And now I don't know how it can keep spinning on _without_ you."


End file.
